Non-Fiction: Hispanic Heritage Month 2025.3

Hispanic Heritage Month 2025

Non-Fiction

This book is about Silvia Vasquez-Lavado's journey to overcome childhood trauma, sexual abuse, and alcoholism by becoming a mountaineer and the first Peruvian woman to complete the Seven Summits. The book details her raw, vulnerable account of healing through high-altitude climbing, her personal quest to reach Mount Everest, and her mission to bring other female survivors of trauma to the mountain's base camp

This book intimately depicts Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s family, the corner of Puerto Rican immigrant New York where she was raised, and the link she feels to the island where she spent childhood summers. This is a woman who knows where she comes from and has the force to bring you there. The first (and only) Hispanic judge on the Supreme Court, Sotomayor says, ‘I’ve spent my whole life learning how to do things that were hard for me.'

The quinceañera, a celebration of a Latina girl’s fifteenth birthday, has become a uniquely American trend. This lavish party with ball gowns, multi-tiered cakes, limousines, and extravagant meals is often as costly as a prom or a wedding. Acclaimed author Julia Alvarez explores the history and cultural significance of the “quince” in the United States, and the consequences of treating teens like princesses. Through her observations of a quince in Queens, interviews with other quince girls, and the memories of her own experience as a young immigrant, Alvarez presents a thoughtful and entertaining portrait of a rapidly growing multicultural phenomenon.

This book explores the shared struggles for freedom and justice by African American and Latinx peoples, reframing U.S. history from a "bottom-up" perspective of the working class against imperialism. The book highlights their interconnected histories, challenging dominant narratives of "manifest destiny" and American exceptionalism by showcasing their collective fight for social justice from the 19th century to the present day, including labor organizing and international solidarity.

Hispanic Heritage Month 2025

Author Bios

Silvia Vasquez-Lavado is an openly gay Peruvian-American mountaineer, tech bro, and social entrepreneur who overcame childhood sexual abuse, alcoholism, and other personal traumas to become the first Peruvian woman to climb the Seven Summits (the highest mountains on each continent). She founded the non-profit Courageous Girls to support survivors of abuse. Her story has been featured in media and is being adapted into a film starring Selena Gomez.

Sonia Sotomayor is the first Hispanic and third woman to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, a role she assumed in 2009. Born in The Bronx, New York, in 1954 to Puerto Rican parents, she was raised by her mother after her father's death. Sotomayor earned degrees from Princeton and Yale Law Schools before serving as an assistant district attorney, then a judge on the U.S. District Court, and finally an appeals court judge, before being nominated to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama.

Everyone has a secret. Everyone has a motive. But only one of them brought a knife to the party . . . To celebrate the end of high school, Izzy Morales joins her best friend Kassidy and five friends on a luxury 1920s-themed getaway at the glamorous Ashwood Manor. There, Izzy and her friends party in vintage dresses and expensive diamonds - until Kassidy's boyfriend turns up dead. And when a raging storm traps them on the island with two detectives, the sparkling young socialites become the prime suspects in his murder. There's the girlfriend, and the other girl. The old friend, and the new friend. The brooding enigma. And then, there's Izzy - the girl who brought the knife . . .

Paul Ortiz is Professor of Labor History at Cornell University and an affiliate faculty member of Cornell's Latino Studies Program. He joined Cornell in 2024 after serving as director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and professor of history at the University of Florida. A third-generation U.S. military veteran, Paul is a PEN-award winning writer. Ortiz’s An African American and Latinx History of the United States, was identified by Fortune Magazine in 2020 as one of the “10 books on American history that actually reflect the United States.”

Julia Alvarez is a Dominican American author born in 1950 who writes poetry, novels, and nonfiction exploring themes of identity, cultural divides, and the immigrant experience. After her family fled the Dominican Republic for New York in 1960 due to political instability, Alvarez found her voice through writing, which she used to process her experiences between two cultures. A respected educator and writer, she received the National Medal of Arts in 2013 and co-founded a sustainable coffee farm and literacy center, Alta Gracia, in the Dominican Republic with her husband.

Suddenly a murder

sonia sotomayor

Lauren Munoz

Silvia Vasquez-Lovado

julia alvarez

Paul ortiz